Shawn Mendes Explains Why Canceling His 2022 Tour Was Both the ‘Hardest’ and ‘Greatest Decision of My Life’

The choice wasn’t easy, but Shawn Mendes doesn’t regret canceling his 2022 tour.

On Sept. 30, the 26-year-old musician appeared on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast and opened up about canceling his 2022 Wonder: The World Tour after just seven dates to focus on his mental health — as well as why it was both the “hardest” and “greatest” decision he’s made.

Thinking back to the time period, Mendes recalled feeling a “general darkness or lowness” related to depression and anxiety. Worse than his own feelings, however, was the fact that viewing his own life “through that lens” kept him from seeing “all the people who are loving you and supporting you.”

Since rising to fame as a young teenager, Mendes noted, he’s “done a lot of tours” and “been in hard places before” — but this was different.

“I had nowhere to go when things were getting hard, you know? I didn’t have other aspects of life that I felt connected to, that I could have leaned into to have a little bit of a break from touring, come back and just find that balance,” explained the “Treat You Better” singer. “And I knew there was only one way of doing that. And it was by just like creating a life.”

Mendes continued, “Canceling that tour was by far the hardest decision of my life and by far the greatest decision of my life — and it gave me a life, you know? It gave me time to discover so much about myself.”

A particularly difficult aspect of the cancellation, for the Canada native, was impacting his “team of almost a hundred people who are away from their families for a year and they’re every day working, they’re not sleeping, they’re sacrificing everything to put this show on.”

“It was like, ‘Oh man, people were excited,’ you know? People were proud of what they created,” said Mendes, “and that was the hard part.”

After kicking off Wonder: The World Tour in June 2022, the “Señorita” artist postponed several dates before canceling the trek altogether the following month. “It has become more clear that I need to take the time I’ve never taken personally, to ground myself and come back stronger,” he wrote at the time.

Mendes recently returned to the stage for several performance in support of his upcoming fourth album, Shawn, out Oct. 18.